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Deployment of airport full body scanners could be delayed

By Paul Marks

In the aftermath of the incident aboard a US-bound airliner on Christmas day in which a passenger attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear, governments are rushing to install full-body scanners at airports to thwart similar attacks.

But their efforts could be stymied by the fact that the scanner technology has not yet been certified as fit for purpose by national governments – and manufacturers will not invest in mass production until it has.

So says Colin McSeveny, a spokesman for Smiths Detection of Watford, UK, which makes millimetre-wave body scanners. “Politicians like Gordon Brown want to get a move on, but these technologies are still in trials. They are not ready yet.

“They have not yet been certified by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the US or the European Union, for example,” says McSeveny. “We’re not going to make 500 of these £100,000 machines until they are certified.”

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According to a spokesman for the UK Department for Transport, body-scanner approvals will be on the agenda at a meeting of the European Commission’s aviation security committee on 7 January, at which responses to the failed attack will be considered. European security officials are also meeting a senior delegation from the US Department of Homeland Security, which runs the TSA, this week.

Under the surface

Establishing rules and approvals for full-body scanning is complicated by variations in how scanners operate. Add to this the need to reassure the public and regulators that the machines do not have unduly harmful health effects (PDF) and do not unnecessarily iinvade people’s privacy, and it’s clear that there is much to iron out before the systems enter service alongside the currently mandated metal-detection and hand-search routines.

There are two main categories of scanner that may be used&colon; walk-in cabinets, which scan one person at a time; or “stand-off” scanners, which are pointed at crowds.

The walk-in systems typically work with either weak X-rays or millimetre waves, using the reflection of the waves off the skin to detect any unusual shapes from say, explosives, gels or plastics. Examples include the X-ray scanner from Rapiscan Systems of Torrance, California, and the millimetre scanners made by L3 Communications of Woburn, Massachusetts, and Smiths Detection.

The certification problem gets still more complicated because there are two types of millimetre-wave systems&colon; passive systems pick up the millimetre waves our bodies reflect from the environment; active millimetre-wave machines use arrays of antennas to project a stronger beam at the subject.

The passive approach is used in a scanner called SPO, made by the UK company Qinetiq, which is designed to scan crowds of people. Unlike systems that produce images of near-naked bodies, SPO activates a warning light if a person walking past it appears to be concealing something on their body. The suspect individual can then be taken aside and searched. This should minimise privacy concerns, says company spokeswoman Claire Scotter.

The TSA has bought 22 SPO systems and used them to screen crowds arriving at airports for the Republican and Democratic party conventions in 2008. They are now thought to be distributed around various US airports.

Doubts over the effectiveness of this system were raised this week by Ben Wallace, a Conservative member of the UK parliament, who until 2005 worked on scanner systems at Qinetiq. He claims the technology had problems picking up certain chemicals and light plastics.

Qinetiq insists Watson’s fears are not valid today. “The technology has moved on since 2005,” says Scotter. “The fact that the TSA has purchased so many of them speaks for itself.”

Not that anyone is claiming scanners are foolproof. “No single technology can address every eventuality or security risk,” says Scotter.